How to Install the Front Mount Trailer Hitch on a 2012 Chevrolet Silverado

Speaker 1: Today on this 2012 Chevrolet Silverado we'll be having a look at and showing you how to install the Curt Front Mount Trailer Hitch Receiver, part number 31322. Here's what our hitch looks like installed. This hitch will be a great way to use certain add-ons with your truck such as winches, snow plows, cargo carriers, bike racks and even occasionally a ball mount, if you need to move a trailer around.On the side of our receiver, you'll find your industry standard five-eighth of an inch diameter hitch pin hole. On the end of our receiver, you'll find this collar that's welded on to give us a nice finish look, and to help reinforce the receiver opening, giving us some added strength. This hitch features a 500 pound max tongue weight rating, which is the amount forcing down. It has a 5,000 pound max gross trailer weight rating, which is the amount it can pull.

It also features a 9,000 pound straight line pull rating.Now for a few measurements to better assist you in choosing any hitch mounted accessory you may need, such as your bike rack, cargo carrier, winch mounting plate, or snow plow. You're looking at about 13 and 3/4 inches from the ground to the top of the two inch receiver opening, and about eight inches from the center of the hitch pin hole to the front most part of the bumper. Now that we've gone over some features, we'll show you how to get it installed.To begin our install, we'll be working at the front left of our Silverado on the inside of the frame rail. We'll start by removing these two 21 millimeter nuts that are in place from the factory. Now we'll remove these two 18 millimeter bolts.

The front one here we have to have an 18 millimeter wrench on the back side holding the nut still as we remove it. And here's the nut. Now we'll take our drivers side bracket, and we'll hang it on the two bolts, and we'll loosely thread on the nuts, just to hold it in place. Now, the bolt that we removed from the front bottom hole, we're going to reverse the orientation of it, so we'll flip it like this and install it from the outside of the frame going through our bracket.Now we have two washers. We need to put these two washers between the bracket and they'll go on to this bolt here, so it'll go on this bolt between the bracket and the frame.

Now we'll loosely thread on our nut. Now we'll take two more washers, and we'll slide them between our frame and the frame bracket, and then run our bolt through them. Now you can see what the washers look like in place, hanging on the bolts in between our frame and the frame bracket.Our passenger side is a little bit different. All of our hardware is on the outside of the frame and not on the inside. For our front bolt on the bottom here again, we will need to have an 18 millimeter wrench, holding the nut still on the inside.

We'll remove this 18 millimeter bolt, and we'll remove those two 21 millimeter nuts. Now, on these two bolts where our 21 millimeter nuts were, they are on a plate. We need to knock these bolts out and reverse the orientations so they'll come through on the outside. When they're knocked free, we can grab the plate, pull it out, and our bolts come with it. We'll now take that plate and place it through on the outside.We'll now place our long bolt through the front hole on the bottom, and we'll reinstall the short bolt in the back hole. We can tighten that bolt down now. On our bottom bolt here, place on two washers, place our bracket on, and reinstall the nuts. We'll leave these loose. Now with an extra set of hands we'll raise our hitch in between our brackets, take our carriage bolt, go through the hitch, through our bracket, and we'll thread on our flange nut. We get one started on each side. Now that we have one started on each side, we'll get our other ones to start as well.Now we'll take our fish wire. We'll go through the hole and our hitch, bring it off to the side for a second. Now we'll place on two flat washers on our pull wire. We'll slide those flat like that. We'll slide on this oval spacer shim on our pull wire. Make sure that sits flat against the hole, and we'll take the pull wire, go through the hole and the frame, and I'll push the pull wire up where it'll come out this access hole in the frame. And place our block under the wire, push it inside, and we'll thread our carriage bolt on. Push that in, and we'll start to pull it through our frame. With our bolt through, we can remove our pull wire. We'll now thread on our flange nut.Now we can begin the process of tightening all the hardware since it's all in place. Use an 11/16 socket to tighten down the carriage bolts. For this one here, next to our frame horn, you will need a wrench to tighten it. Now we'll tighten down our frame brackets to the frame. Now we'll torque all of our hardware to the amount specified in the instructions.And that completes our look at and showing you how to install the Curt Front Mount Trailer Hitch Receiver, part number 31322, on this 2012 Chevrolet Silverado.

Yes, I would like an email notification if someone replies to my comment?

Info for this part was:

Video Edited:

Joshua S

Video Edited:

Kathleen M

Test Fit:

Randy B

Test Fit:

Brent H

At etrailer.com we provide the best information available about the products we sell. We take the quality of our information seriously so that you can get the right part the first time. Let us know if anything is missing or if you have any questions.